


two stories

by Amber



Series: Create Something Every Day! (October 2018) [16]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Power Swap, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Anthropomorphic, Deer, Fairy Tale Elements, Gore, Hunters & Hunting, M/M, October Prompt Challenge, Surreal, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 15:17:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16328480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amber/pseuds/Amber
Summary: Prompt 18: Role-Reversal.(It's a domain-change AU!)





	two stories

This is a story with a happy ending.

Once upon a time, there was a boy who loved violence. The gun-metal taste of sadism, the exorcism of it. A release before he was old enough to even conceive of other kinds of release, and there would be teeth beneath his knuckles, blood and spit and howling. He was expelled from an expensive preparatory school for fracturing another boy's eye socket with his cricket bat. He never bothered cleaning off the stains where the wood drank blood — let the other team see and fear him.

Little boys grow up, of course. They grow up and go to Oxford, if they come from the kind of European family name for which that's an inevitability. Christchurch in the early 1990s is not conducive to becoming _less_ angry, not when you're small and queer and unimpressed by pretensions. But Elias Bouchard finds marijuana helps soften the sadism at the edges into something acceptable, the kind of knife allowed at parties so long as it agrees to aim its point at those deemed lower on the social hierarchy. Those smaller and queerer and poorer than he. That kind of thing is good blackmail material.

It is generally agreed that Bouchard is going to make a great politician.

"Do you hunt?" someone irrelevant asks him at a party he won't remember as distinct from all the other parties. There's something to his accent that makes it clear exactly what he means. Foxes, hounds, artillery. Pheasants and deer. Hunting as recreation.

"Never had the opportunity," Elias admits, which is how on his next break, the last one before the finals he already knows he will fail, he finds himself sober and impatient on the estate of a son of a lord. And these little princes around him, oh, chuffed as anything, tell him what good fun it will be to find and kill something innocent in the woods today.

Elias does not kill anything innocent in the woods. But he does rediscover his violence, tastes flowers on his tongue even though there's blood and screams and gunpowder in the air. The Hunt sings through him, the only song it knows, and Elias turns his gory face skyward and worships himself into apotheosis.

The End.

This is another story with a happy ending.

Once upon a time there was a man who was punished for his violence by being trapped in the body of a great horned creature, with hooves for feet, branched and towering antlers. 

But that was twenty years ago, and he now has new and greater violences planned.

Is it perhaps strange? That the avatar of the hunt should take the form of a prey animal? But Elias Bouchard has never had any interest in acting like prey. 

He dons his sharp tailored suit and sits at his desk with a glass of whiskey in his hand, listens to the whispers of the leaves. Scents the Archivist in the air before she arrives, and his soft deer face and liquid eyes regard her with cold amusement.

"Archivist," he says.

"Please," she says. "Call me Melanie."

"Come to take my statement?"

"Actually, I think I'm supposed to kill you?" She scoffs. "You know. To save the world or whatever."

"Ah, yes. To save the world or whatever," echoes Elias with distinct, mocking diction. "Of course. Wonderful." His golden eyes narrow, big shaggy head tipped forward with the weight of his antlers. Sasha takes a small step back.

It would be convenient if she wanted to kiss him. It would be convenient if they wanted to kiss. He is unpleasant, monstrous, but perhaps his love for her could undo all of that. Perhaps it could make him whole. She could transform him back into that silly-sharp young stoner from Oxford, and the call to blood in him would finally quieten, and they would be together, and nothing would ever be hard for them.

Perhaps you'd rather know what Jonathan Sims is doing (sitting in his parlour knitting a scarf. The young boy in the corner has his mouth stuffed with silk so as not to interrupt the silence with screaming.) When he kisses Elias it changes both of them, but never in safe ways. It makes both of them vulnerable with knowledge of each other's truths. It makes Jon realize guilty things about himself — he sends out more hollowed out spider people into the world so that Elias' people will have something to Hunt. It's not so much a chess game as a long series of love letters. Jon feels guilty because he should have more care for his spiders.

Melanie has never used a spear in her life, so instead of obeying his instincts and bolting into the dark woods, Elias makes it easy for her. He stands very still and lifts his face upwards as she pushes her weapon slowly into his throat. A knife would have been more sensible and just as ritualistic, he thinks with irritation, as his own blood drips black onto the leafmold, stains the crisp white of his shirt.

It's a dissatisfying death. And he has to get his suit drycleaned after. Archivists; truly the least _fun_ of all the Avatars. 

(He knows Martin disagrees. "Everyone who works at the Institute is terribly isolated, even when they're working together," he once told Elias with blatant fondness in his voice. "Don't you think that's lovely?")

"Will you chase me?" he requests of Jon, wanting to work out some of the energy that burns bright beneath his skin.

Jon huffs like it's an inconvenience, but agrees. Elias paws the ground with a hoof and snorts, pleased and restless, before taking off at a nimble clip into the forest.

But Jon comes at things sideways. Does he even leave Elias' office? He must have, to place the webs — or perhaps his slings and servants did it for him. Certainly he doesn't seem at all worn out when he approaches Elias, bound and dangling, the silk tight around his wrists. He'd tried to snap the long strings with his antlers and instead they're tangled and stuck. His throat is as exposed as when he offered it to the Archivist. His suit is lifted, crumpled, exposing his velveteen belly. Jon traces his fingers over it and Elias wriggles, delighted and frustrated.

"Do you like it in my web?" Jon asks.

"I'm not — capable, of liking stillness," says Elias, kicks out with his strong legs. 

Jon dodges them nimbly. "Here, then," he says, and this time when he traces over Elias' bare skin it's with his frontmost leg, the setae tingling at the warmth and fur across their bristles, the musk and blood scent of Elias that he loves so much. He drags the sharp claw over Elias' abdomen and opens him up onto the forest floor. Elias beats a furious scream.

And then he goes down on his knees and digs his human hands into the viscera.

When Elias awakens in a quiet clearing, moon-dappled and cold, he cannot cry, doesn't have the proper tear ducts. And why would he cry? Once hunted, once sacrificed, he is almost through with the ritual. The last thing he will have to do is kill, and there is so much joy in violence, so much joy.

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> Greatly inspired by [crimson-chains' incredible original art](https://crimson-chains.tumblr.com/post/178619816451/).


End file.
